“If given the opportunity to write a letter to the President — a letter in which illness and impending death served a larger agenda– what would I say to him?”

This question was answered by a wonderful man who is in a hospice with perhaps days to live. His friend Paul Loeb posted Robert Ellis Gordon’s thoughts on HuffPo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/letter-to-obama-from-a-dy_b_224588.html

I sent an email response to Robert and he asked that I post my comment on the HuffPo thread which I did. If you were moved as I was by the words of a man who has no fear to speak his truth, I would encourage you to do the same.

Robert is urging Obama to level with the people on the dire economic emergency we face. He wants President Obama to make clear we are in serious peril and to do it through authentic hope. To speak “more deeply from the heart as well as the head. Above all, speak in the spirit of Judge Learned Hand: ‘The spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure.’”

Can a president do that? When the Wall Streeters have cunningly taught all economic masters to not frighten them into deep downswings, can a president reassure the people that he’s not sure how or when he can get us out of this mess?

Barack who inspired so many with his book and life story, who entered politics to expand the reach and power of the underserved and oppressed through the political power game, soon learned to pragmatically speak and think so some legislation could get passed that accomplished something, but not enough.

Pragmatic, safe speak was not what inspired a nation and a world. We didn’t strive to believe, “Yes we can!”, so that real change would come from maintaining and enabling the same old pay to play game. We didn’t shout back, “Yes we can, sort of!” As Robert points out, Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia didn’t move us by the logic, it moved us by the passion and humanity and our longing for a more fair and just world.

When Barack’s wife Michelle speaks you immediately sense her genuineness and capacity for love of her fellow human beings. We aren’t listening to her words. We listen to her heart. Just as I am sure Barack has learned a great deal from Michelle, I wished he could capture that aura. Unfortunately, that aura only works when it is totally genuine. I believe Barack got into politics for the right reasons and has sacrificed a lot personally, as do all significant legislators, to help people who desperately need help from a genuine heart and not a political one. He needs to take the risk of showing us his heart and even anger as well as his logical thinking if he wants the majority of us to pull together.

What has changed for him and us is the number of desperate people. It is no longer those who we could immediately recognize as street people or the rural poor. It is now all of us no matter the material trappings we use to shield ourselves from the real world. Our world is dying regardless of what the global warming naysayers claim. Even if we dismiss global warming, we have too many people on a planet with dwindling resources contrasted by a medical ability to live far longer than ever realistically imagined.

In the future, who will make the decisions about who lives long and who doesn’t. Can you imaging an impartial jury deciding that or dog eat dog capitalistic survival deciding it? It is up to us now to begin the process of who will run our future world provided our grandkids have one that isn’t already lost.

We rightfully are placing enormous expectations on the mind and heart of our 44^th president. If anyone should be in that position, it should be Barack with his exceptional intelligence, communication skills and life experience. Now our task is to find the best way to support him.

While we need people to tell us the truth of the peril we face with our damaging capitalistic domination and imperialistic current approach, the warnings are meaningless if we throw up our hands and say the challenge is too tough to solve or even imagine solving.

We have to find our small, individual role using our personal strengths and pull together, not apart, if we want to give ourselves a chance. We have to do that for the remainder of our lives as Robert has done and marvelously been revealed to us by the posting on HuffPo.

As we start another year in our young American history, I hope you will think about your part, not that you haven’t, and renew your “Yes we can!’ spirit to do whatever you can, in your life journey.

I would feel so alone and discouraged on this journey if it were not for the Internet and all the wonderful friends locally and worldwide that I have discovered that share my passion to build a better world. We have been provided a marvelous tool to make our voices heard. That is why I know, “We can do it!”